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General Sir David Richards’ end of year speech should be required reading for ministers across the Coalition Government. The drive for collective action and a ‘grand strategy’ to tackle the flagging economy is a worthy goal for any department.

Last week, General Sir David Richards, the head of the armed forces, said that the economy is today’s ‘biggest strategic threat’ to the United Kingdom. In his speech he warned that the crisis in the euro zone was of ‘huge importance not just for the City of London but to the whole country, and to military planners like me.’

In the past week, Europe has resembled something like school playground. Due to David Cameron using his Veto last week, the French have lashed out with several, vindictive and frankly, rather childish statements about the state of the British economy; despite the fact that Angela Merkel pointed out that Britain still had an important role to play in helping to sort out the Eurozone Crisis. It’s worth pointing out I feel, that in a note of poetic irony, Standard & Poor are expected to downgrade the French credit rating within days, whilst Britain’s remains as stable as ever. There have been calls from many influential people, that to ensure the survival of the Eurozone, that Greece should be allowed to bow out gracefully, and with as much dignity as it can muster.

There have been many different regimes and dictatorships in the news recently, for a variety of different reasons. The Arab Spring has been one of the biggest international events in recent years as several regimes have fallen in the past 12 months and many others are under pressure. It is not just the Arab world which has seen regimes, dictatorships and allegedly corrupt governments put under pressure. Russia has seen protests and international pressure after the allegedly corrupt legislative election earlier this month and the government have also been accused of mistreating protestors and journalists. Another regime which has seen a sizable uprising is the government in Belarus; however, it has not been in the media as much as other uprisings.

Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarussian president is now serving his fourth term after he won a presidential election in December 2010 by gaining nearly 80% of the votes. The result prompted mass protests against the government as there were allegations of vote fraud. The protestors met resistance from riot police and interior ministry troops; many fled from the protests but some who did not flee were beaten and hospitalised or unfairly arrested by the police. READ THE REST OF THE ENTRY

‘If you can’t decide, you can’t lead’. That was the scathing assessment David Cameron handed out to Ed Miliband in the Commons on Monday over Ed’s apparent reluctance to inform the country what he would have done if he had been in Cameron’s seat in Brussels last Thursday. Unfortunately, on this rare occasion, I would have to agree with our Prime Minister. Read the rest of this entry →

The European summit on Friday 9th December 2011 was the day David Cameron became the first British leader to veto a European treaty. The UK Prime Minister vetoed changes in the European Union’s Lisbon treaty aimed at tackling the Eurozone financial crisis, declaring it was not in Britain’s national interest.

A new fiscal deal to bind the Eurozone did emerge from the European Union summit. We see the prospect of all 26 of the 27 members of the European Union agreeing to a new fiscal deal in a move towards a more disciplined economic policy. EU countries are required to present their national budgets to the European Commission. Stricter budget rules will be installed in the national constitutions of those countries abiding to this agreement. This separate agreement, will see the 26 EU countries finances tied together to solve the Eurozone financial crisis leaving the UK to stand alone. Read the rest of this entry →